ATHENIAN: The next point to consider here, by the looks of it, is whether this is the only good – this insight into our natures – to be found in the correct use of wine in company, or whether there is some other great benefit which merits serious attention. What do we say about that? Yes, there is a great benefit – or so our argument appears to suggest. As for where the benefit is and what form it takes, well, we need to listen to the argument with great care. We don't want to be tripped up by it somehow.

CLEINIAS: Go ahead.

ATHENIAN: Very well. What I'd like to do is remind you just what we say correct education is, since this activity, properly managed, is in fact a safeguard of education, I now venture to suggest.

CLEINIAS: A large claim.

ATHENIAN: Well, I maintain that with children, their first childish perception is pleasure and pain, and that it is in these that goodness and badness first make their appearance in the soul. As for wisdom and true opinions which can be relied on, well, you're lucky if they make their appearance even in old age – certainly the person who has acquired them, and all the good things that go with them, is a complete human being. Now education, I maintain, is this goodness as it is making its first appearance in children; if pleasure, friendship, pain, and hatred arise in the proper way in the souls of those who cannot as yet grasp the reason for them, and if, when they do grasp the reason, their feelings are consonant with that reason because they have been correctly trained by the appropriate habits, then this consonance is in general called human goodness, while the part of it which has had a proper upbringing where pleasure and pain are concerned, so that, from the very beginning to the very end, they hate what they should hate and love what they should love – well, separate off this part in your account and give it the name ‘education’, and in my opinion at least you will be giving it the right name.

CLEINIAS: Yes, my friend. The things you said earlier about education seemed to us to be correct – and the same goes for the things you've just been saying.

ATHENIAN: Well, all that discussion just about brings us on to the establishment of public offices in your city.

CLEINIAS: Yes, that is what comes next.

ATHENIAN: There are in fact two dimensions to the ordering of a political system: first, the establishing of offices and the people who are going to hold them; how many of them should there be, and how should appointments to them be made? After that, each office must be given its own particular laws – whatever laws, in number and character, are the right ones for it to have. But hang on a minute – before we make our selection, there's an observation we need to make which is not without some bearing on the subject.

CLEINIAS: What observation is that?

ATHENIAN: This. It's obvious to anyone, I suppose, this kind of thing, but lawgiving is a serious business, so if a city which has been well catered for appoints unsuitable officials to supervise laws that are well framed, not only does it get no advantage from them, well framed as they are – not to mention exposing the city to complete ridicule – but, broadly speaking, by far the greatest injuries and violence in cities arise from this cause.

CLEINIAS: That goes without saying.

ATHENIAN: In which case, my friend, let's pay a bit of attention to this point and its bearing on the political system and city we're now talking about. You can see for a start that the correct way for people to approach the responsibilities of office is for them to have been thoroughly tested – not just the men themselves, but their families as well – from childhood right up to their selection; and then secondly, that the people who are going to make the selection must in their turn have been brought up in the ways of the law, well educated in the likes and dislikes which give them the ability to choose or reject those who, in either case, deserve it. But this is a problem for people who have only just come together, with no knowledge of one another, and (so far) no education; how could they possibly select magistrates without making a mess of it?

ATHENIAN: After cases of assault, let us have a once-for-all statement of the general principle relating to violence, as follows: no one is to take away or drive off anything belonging to anybody else, or even make use of any of his neighbour's possessions without the owner's consent, since that is the kind of behaviour which has been, which is, and which always will be at the root of all the evils we have been talking about. Apart from those, the most serious offences are undisciplined acts of aggression on the part of the young – most seriously against temples, especially holy places which are public, or held in joint ownership by members of a tribe or something of that sort. Offences against private shrines and tombs come second, and are second in point of severity. Against parents, third, any act of aggression other than those described earlier. The fourth kind of aggression is when someone, out of contempt for the magistrates, drives off or takes away, or uses, something of theirs, without their consent. Fifth, any violation of the rights of any individual citizen which demands legal redress. We must publish legislation to cover each of these offences.

For temple robbery, either with violence or by stealth, it has been stated, in general terms, what the penalty should be. But for all those offences against the gods, which a person commits by word or deed, in his speech or actions, the statement of the penalty should be preceded by some words of positive encouragement. Let them be as follows: nobody who believes that the gods exist, as the laws require, has ever intentionally performed an impious action or breathed a word contrary to law. No, people do these things in one of three frames of mind: either lacking the belief I mentioned; or second, believing that there are gods, but that they care nothing for human beings; or third, that they are easily won over by inducements in the form of sacrifice and prayer.

CLEINIAS: How, in that case, should we deal with them? How talk to them?

ATHENIAN: Well, no offence, but let's first listen to them, to the lighthearted and contemptuous things I'm prepared to bet they say about us.